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Re: Scalding breastmilk due to excessive Lipase

I see there are many mom's with the same spoiled breast milk problem I've just discovered I have! My question is do I have to do anything if my child does not complain about the flavor and still drinks the milk? Ava seems to have no problem with the thawed milk even though we find it smells and tastes sour compared with the fresh stuff.

initial results

ok, my refrigeration portion of my experiment is complete. This was done with Milk which I pumped at work and chilled until I got home a few hours later. I split a "batch" from a single pumping session into 2 equal portions. One portion I scalded and the other portion I did not. I then split each of the two portions further into two portions each. One of the two scalded portions I refrigerated, the other I placed in the freezer (not a deep freeze). And I did the same with the unscalded portions, one in fridge one in freezer. NoteI only heated the milk to 160 degrees instead of the 180 that has been recommended - 160 degrees for 15 seconds is enough to halt the lipase that does the damage, whereas 180 degrees causes the milk to break down and become clotted - in fact that is exactly how clotted cream is made).

The milk was pumped and "prepped" on June 16th. Each day, my hubby did a blind smell and taste test from each of the REFRIGERATED samples. For 2 days both smelled fine and tasted sweet. On the 19th, both smelled fine, but the un-scalded sample had begun to have that telltale soapy/sour aftertaste and we discarded it. But the scalded sample was as sweet as the day it was pumped and was still fresh tasting as of yesterday, June 21st.

So, preliminary results: Milk doesn't necessarily have to be scalded immediately after pumping - (at least MINE doesn't - results will probably vary), after chilling for a few hours the benefit of scalding is still apparent, with refrigerated samples.

I plan to leave the freezer samples for 2 weeks so I will be having DH smell and taste them on or about June 30th. I will update you all then!

Re: Scalding breastmilk due to excessive Lipase

Ok, Scalded then refrigerate milk was still good as of today (DAY 10!!!) I threw it away, simply because I have no desire or need to keep milk in the fridge that long (sample was less than an ounce). I plan to stick to the LLL guidlines. But it is sure nice to see my BM lasting longer than a day or two.

Re: Scalding breastmilk due to excessive Lipase

I'm afraid that I may also have the same problem. I, too, would like to know how this can affect the baby, because he has been drinking it while I have been at work. I'm hoping I just had a bad batch of milk because he has been drinking frozen milk while I am away for the last four months! He is healthy and has been drinking his bottles just fine. (I also have several bags stored in the freezer that would all be wasted!)
Thanks Bobindy1 for the experiment. I was wondering what you use to measure the temperature of the milk.

Re: Scalding breastmilk due to excessive Lipase

My baby is 8 months old and I am just figuring out what is going on!!! Obviously he doesn't take much expressed bm.

This is my second child and I swear I didn't have this problem with my first. He drank EBM all the time as I worked part time then. Is it strange that I have having this problem now and not the first time??

Also this baby is milk and soy protein intolerant. I have had no milk or soy for over 6 months. My first child didn't have this problem... well that I acknowledged anyway . I wonder if my limited diet has anything to do with my lipase levels. I am sure I will never know.

So let me get this straight, to scald my bm I heat it until it just bubbles around the edges. Not to a boil.

Re: Scalding breastmilk due to excessive Lipase

Boy am I relieved to find this thread! I've been pumping and freezing since baby was 4 weeks, and building quite a supply of "breastmilk-cicles". Then about two weeks ago we decided to do a test run of thawing & preparing a bottle so I can teach others in my family the process. It was quite a shock to discover that the thawed BM smelled and tasted horrible. Our baby got very upset and violently refused to take any. We tried diluting the thawed with alot of fresh BM and was able to get baby to take a small amount but he was clearly not happy with it and refused to take any more after about 1/2 ounce.

Several people have pointed me to the LLLI and KellyMom (http://www.kellymom.com/bf/pumping/l...essedmilk.html) resources about scalding, but the instructions seem pretty vague to me and I've been reluctant to experiment because it breaks my heart to have to toss more BM.

And - I'd be very happy to work with anyone who had successfully done the scalding technique to develop detailed "cookbook" style instructions that include what equipment you used to do the scalding, how you measured the temperature, and how you did the "Quickly cool and store the milk" step. I think it would be a HUGE help to have some step-by-step instructions complete with pictures to share with others struggling with too much lipase.

Is it true that there's no way to salvage already frozen BM that hadn't been scalded first? I've already thrown out 4 3oz bags that we thawed and found were bad, and have 9 more in the freezer.

Re: Scalding breastmilk due to excessive Lipase

Oh - and one more thought ... does anybody know if the scalding instructions would be different at altitude? Where I am water boils at 203 F instead of the sea level 212 F. Or - is it more important to focus on "until you see little bubbles around the edge of the pan" rather than the specific temperature?

Re: Scalding breastmilk due to excessive Lipase

Quick update - I finally got brave and did a test last week of scalding and then freezing a small amount of my milk. We thawed out one milk-scicle today. Preliminary results are inconclusive. It smelled and tasted OK to me (previous thawed frozen was hideous). When DH gave a bottle to DS, DS did one oz just fine and then got super fussy. After that we couldn't get him calm enough to take either a bottle of fresh or to nurse at my breast. So we don't know if he was fussy because he didn't like the thawed scalded BM, or fussy because he was over tired and too hungry to focus on sucking (which happens occasionally). We're going to try again tomorrow when baby is calmer and not frantically hungry. I'll post results either way, and if we have success will write up detailed documentation of what I did. Being somewhat compulsive, I even took pictures as I went.

Re: Scalding breastmilk due to excessive Lipase

Well ... we tried the other sample of scalded frozen BM and our lovely little boy wouldn't take any. Then again he also woke up from a nap super fussy and wouldn't take a bottle of fresh either. It took quite awhile for me to get him calm enough to nurse. I'm saying for now that the results of our scalding & freezing experiment are inconclusive. I'll do more research and post whatever we find out.

It makes me very sad, but without being able to rely on a stash of frozen BM, we may have to resort to formula for emergencies and if I'm away for work for longer than a couple of days. At least DS got 3 months solid of only BM.